Prosecutor: Illinois woman told children to pray, then stabbed them as they begged for lives

Neighbors heard the couple shouting at each other, but they never saw it get physical. Artur Plackowska said his wife recently told him she loved him.

But beneath that ordinary domestic facade lay far more violent resentments between the husband and wife, prosecutors say, eventually leading Elzbieta Plackowska to kill her own 7-year-old son, stabbing him 100 times Tuesday, all out of anger at her often-absent, truck driver husband. She then fatally and repeatedly stabbed a 5-year-old girl she was babysitting.

"She felt he truly did not appreciate how fine a wife and mother she was," DuPage County State's Attorney Robert Berlin said. "She told the detectives that she thought by killing (her son) Justin she would make her husband hurt the way she hurt in their relationship."

The gruesome slayings have shocked this vibrant, populous suburb 25 miles west of Chicago, leaving prosecutors, neighbors and relatives at a loss. Berlin said the 40-year-old Polish immigrant told investigators that her husband used to bring her flowers and gifts, but she resented him being home only on weekends and that she had to work as a maid, which she felt was beneath her.

For some in Naperville, it brought back painful memories of a similar horror, when Marilyn Lemak fed her three children peanut butter laced with antidepressants and suffocated them 13 years ago as revenge on her estranged husband.

"I don't understand anything that's going on," said Tim Hooper, 28, who lives in the same condominium complex as the Plackowska family and would sometimes work out with Plackowska's older son. "This is so out of the blue."

The Naperville police chief said the crime scene was the most gruesome sight he'd seen in three decades on the job.

Officials said Thursday that Plackowska ordered her son Justin and a kindergartner she was babysitting, 5-year-old Olivia Dworakowski, to kneel on a bedroom floor and pray, then stabbed them both dozens of times as they begged for their lives, striking again and again as she told her son he was going to heaven.

Plackowska killed Olivia because she had witnessed the attack on Justin, Berlin said.

Officers who forced their way inside the locked apartment hours later found blood-spattered walls and the children's bodies in a master bedroom where moments before the killings they had been happily jumping on a bed, prosecutors said.

Olivia's body was found on the bed, and Justin's was found on the floor beside it. He had stab wounds on his head, face, neck and back. Both appeared to have had their throats slit.

The slayings took place at the home of Olivia's mother, who works nights as a nurse and had left her daughter in Plackowska's care before. Plackowska also stabbed the two family dogs.

Investigators found two blood-stained knives: a steak knife in the kitchen sink and another in Plackowska's car, Berlin said.

Still covered in blood and with scratches on her hands, Plackowska drove to a Catholic church. Finding it closed, she called the church and left a message saying she had "done something bad" and needed help, Berlin said. She then went to a friend's home where her adult son was staying and said she had been robbed.

About the same time, Olivia's mother, Marta Dworakowski, returned home to discover her door locked and the babysitter's car gone. She called police to report her daughter was missing, and officers forced their way into the home.

Police took Plackowska into custody at her friend's home, and prosecutors charged her with first-degree murder late Wednesday.

Plackowska initially told investigators that an intruder had broken into the home and killed the children while she was outside smoking a cigarette. She then told investigators she was battling the devil and trying to get evil out of the children. Finally, Berlin said, she admitted she had lashed out in anger at her husband.

Plackowska's husband, Artur, denied the two were having problems.

"The day before (the killings) she told me that she loves me," he said in a brief interview with The Associated Press, before hanging up because he said he wanted to focus on giving his son a proper funeral.

However, a neighbor said he frequently heard the couple shouting at each other. "It happened once every other month," Victor Tuckenberry said.

There also were money troubles. Public records show the couple filed a Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2009; a foreclosure in her name only was filed in 2007.

Still, Tuckenberry said Plackowska doted on her sons and he was shocked by the slayings. Plackowska and Justin "were together all the time," he said.

Plackowska arrived in the United States from her native Poland on a tourist visa 12 years ago, Berlin said. She is not a U.S. citizen and authorities were trying to verify her immigration status. Berlin said she has no prior history of violence, although she had a misdemeanor DUI about 10 years ago.

Plackowska didn't speak during Thursday's bond hearing other than to indicate she could not afford an attorney. The judge appointed a public defender.

Isolated and forgotten: NYC's hard-hit Staten Island say help is slow to come after Sandy

The mother grabbed her two boys and fled their home filling with water, hoping to outrun Superstorm Sandy.

But Glenda Moore and her SUV were no match for the epic storm. Moore's Ford Explorer stalled in the rising tide, and the rushing waters snatched 2-year-old Brandon and 4-year-old Connor from her arms as they tried to escape.

The youngsters' bodies were recovered from a marsh Thursday — the latest, most gut-wrenching blow in New York's Staten Island, an isolated city borough hard-hit by the storm and yet, residents say, largely forgotten by federal officials assessing damage of the monster storm that has killed more than 90 people in 10 states.

"Terrible, absolutely terrible," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said as he announced the boys' bodies had been found on the third day of a search that included police divers and sniffer dogs. "It just compounds all the tragic aspects of this horrific event."

The heartbreaking discovery came as residents and public officials complained that help has been frustratingly slow to arrive on stricken Staten Island, where 19 have been killed — nearly half the death toll of all of New York City.

Garbage is piling up, a stench hangs in the air and mud-caked mattresses and couches line the streets. Residents are sifting through the remains of their homes, searching for anything that can be salvaged.

"We have hundreds of people in shelters," said James Molinaro, the borough's president. "Many of them, when the shelters close, have nowhere to go because their homes are destroyed. These are not homeless people. They're homeless now."

Molinaro complained the American Red Cross "is nowhere to be found" — and some residents questioned what they called the lack of a response by government disaster relief agencies. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Federal Emergency Management Agency Deputy Administrator Richard Serino planned to tour the island on Friday.

Four days after Sandy lashed the East Coast with high winds and a huge storm surge, frustration mounted across New York City and well beyond as millions of people remained without power and motorists lined up for hours at gas stations in New Jersey and New York. Yet there were hopeful signs that life would soon begin to return to something approaching normal.

Consolidated Edison, the power company serving New York, said electricity should be restored by Saturday to customers in Manhattan and to homes and offices served by underground power lines in Brooklyn. More subway and rail lines were expected to open Friday, including Amtrak' New York to Boston route on the Northeast Corridor.

But the prospect of better times ahead did little to mollify residents who spent another day and night in the dark.

"It's too much. You're in your house. You're freezing," said Geraldine Giordano, 82, a lifelong resident of the West Village. Near her home, city employees had set up a sink where residents could get fresh water, if they needed it. There were few takers. "Nobody wants to drink that water," Giordano said.

"Everybody's tired of it already," added Rosemarie Zurlo, a makeup artist who once worked on Woody Allen movies. She said she planned to temporarily abandon her powerless, unheated apartment in the West Village to stay with her sister in Brooklyn. "I'm leaving because I'm freezing. My apartment is ice cold."

There was increasing concern about the outage's impact on elderly residents. Community groups have been going door-to-door on the upper floors of darkened Manhattan apartment buildings, and city workers and volunteer in hard-hit Newark, N.J., delivered meals to seniors and others stuck in their buildings.

"It's been mostly older folks who aren't able to get out," said Monique George of Manhattan-based Community Voices Heard. "In some cases, they hadn't talked to folks in a few days. They haven't even seen anybody because the neighbors evacuated. They're actually happy that folks are checking, happy to see another person. To not see someone for a few days, in this city, it's kind of weird."

Along the devastated Jersey Shore and New York's beachfront communities, a lack of electricity was the least of anyone's worries.

Residents were allowed back in their neighborhoods Thursday for the first time since Sandy made landfall Monday night. Some were relieved to find only minor damage, but many others were wiped out. "A lot of tears are being shed today," said Dennis Cucci, whose home near the ocean in Point Pleasant Beach sustained heavy damage. "It's absolutely mind-boggling."

After touring a flood-ravaged area of northeastern New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie said it was time to act, not mourn.

"We're in the 'triage and attack phase' of the storm, so we can restore power, reopen schools, get public transportation back online and allow people to return to their homes if they've been displaced," he said.

In Staten Island, police recounted Glenda Moore's fruitless struggle to save her children.

Kelly said the 39-year-old mother "was totally, completely distraught" after she lost her grip on her sons shortly after 6 p.m. Monday. In a panic, she climbed fences and went door-to-door looking in vain for help in a neighborhood that was presumably largely abandoned in the face of the storm.

She eventually gave up, spending the night trying to shield herself from the storm on the front porch of an empty home.

Issues matter more than race in elections

After the Civil War, the Republican Party benefited from blacks’ adoration of the Great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln, to reap votes. Franklin Roosevelt was beloved for his New Deal, but many African Americans continued to vote Republican until 1948, when Democrat Harry Truman, who had integrated the armed forces, pushed for a civil rights bill.

Truman raised the ire of Southern Democrats, who formed their own party dedicated to states’ rights — the most important right being the subjugation of African Americans. They were called the Dixiecrats, and are worth a history lesson now because their legacy is a factor in the racially polarized politics we have now.

The Dixiecrats’ descendants have mostly joined the GOP. They will say they didn’t leave the Democratic Party; the party left them. And to a large degree, they’re right. As the Democratic Party became more inclined to take liberal positions favored by African Americans on issues such as school integration and affirmative action, the Republican Party became more conservative.

That division has benefitted both parties. Republicans devised the so-called Southern strategy, which lavished most of its attention on white voters. The strategy has been given credit by some political analysts for electing the last four GOP presidents who ran for that office. (Gerald Ford didn’t run.)

On the other side of the coin, Democratic presidential candidates have been able to count on most African Americans’ voting for them. Given that reality, President Obama would likely be polling nicely among black voters even if he were white. But as an African American Democrat, polls show him supported by up to 92 percent of black voters.

Such blanket support has Republicans like former White House chief of staff John Sununu saying it’s all about skin color. He later retracted his allegation that Colin Powell had endorsed Obama just because he’s black. Sununu should know that if race alone determined whom blacks support, black Republicans would benefit, too. Most don’t, because they’re wrong on the issues.

Another demographic offers additional evidence of that fact. A recent Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll shows Obama getting 70 percent of the Hispanic vote. The president isn’t Latino; he’s garnering that level of support because, even though he’s cracked down on illegal aliens, he offers a better chance for immigration reform than Mitt Romney.

Race still matters in American politics, but the issues matter more. While Obama stands to gain the most minority votes, polls show him with only about 36 percent of the white vote — seven points less than what he received in 2008. Among white voters, no doubt some would never vote for a black candidate for president or anything else. But especially among those who voted for Obama four years ago, most simply disagree with him on the issues.

First iPad Mini shipments pushed to 2 weeks

Four minutes into the day, Apple started accepting online orders for the iPad Mini, with initial promises to deliver the smaller, lighter, and less expensive tablet on November 2 soon turning into a promise to ship it in two weeks for some models.

Apple's online stores lit up at 12:04 a.m. PT in the United States, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Japan to those people eager to get the tablet as soon as possible but not wait in line when the first models arrive in stores on November 2.

But the balance of supply and demand meant that many buyers will have to show up in person if they want an iPad Mini as soon as possible. By 12:27 a.m. in the United States, the Apple store's words "delivers 11/2" became "available to ship: 2 weeks" for the 64GB white model. Several other models -- black iPad Minis in particular -- kept their November 2 delivery date.

Supplies appeared thinner in Europe. At 12:47 a.m. PT in Germany, all models in all colors slipped to a two-week shipment date. In France and the U.K., all white models showed a two-week shipment schedule.

The iPad Mini is arriving in two waves, with Wi-Fi-only models first and 4G-equipped models a couple weeks later. Apple listed initial ship dates of November 2 for the Wi-Fi model across the different countries, but said the Wi-Fi + 4G models would arrive in mid-November in the United States and the end of November in Europe. In Japan, the Wi-Fi + 4G models couldn't be ordered yet.

Carriers also sell iPads, but a survey of a half dozen showed none promoting or selling the iPad Mini yet. Presumably that will change closer to November 16, when the 4G models arrive in stores.

Tablets have become a huge business for Apple, with 14 million iPads sold last quarter, though not as big as its iPhone business, with 26.9 million.

Preorders can be a big problem as customers mob online stores in an effort to get the first models without having to wait in line at Apple stores. In September, iPhone 5 preorders brought down Apple's online store and those of several carriers selling the product.

Those who don't get into the online shopping queue early don't get their devices soon. iPhone 5 delivery times quickly reached 3 to 4 weeks as 2 million flooded in during the initial spurt of sales activity last month.

The most notable iPad Mini differences compared to earlier iPads is the smaller size, of course, a lower 0.68-pound weight, and also a lower price starting at $329. That should help the iPad line keep the pressure the PC market when it comes to attracting customers' disposable income this holiday season.

The Wi-Fi models of the iPad Mini will arrive in stores on November 2 at $329 for 16GB, $429 for 32GB, and $529 for 64GB. On November 16, the models that support both Wi-Fi and 4G LTE wireless networks will arrive at $459 for 16GB, $559 for 32GB, and $659 for 64GB.

The iPad Mini's 1,024x768-pixel screen has a 7.9-inch diagonal compared to 9.7 inches for the regular iPad. It's also got an Apple A5 processor -- a relatively elderly model compared to the A6 in the iPhone 5 and the A6X in the fourth-generation iPad.

The new tablet also has a front-facing 720p-capable FaceTime camera and a 5-megapixel back camera; 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi at 5.2Ghz; Bluetooth 4.0; and Apple's smaller new Lightning connector.